Oldal 95 [95]
to the mode of thought that was just awakening to self-discovery
during the Enlightenment, so however the travels have shown how
many different people live in the world, but that was not enough for
the mind. (Kant 1977. 8. p.89-106.)* Kant committed this to paper
in 1785. In 1775, he began another of his works with a remark that
was uncommon at the time: “all humans in the whole word belong
to the same natural genus” (Kant 1998 p.39. Kant 1977. 2. p.427.) With
all this in mind, it is very difficult to write calmly about the insane
remarks that typically circulate that Kant was a racist. Whoever
says this, 1. has not read Kant (or did not understand a bit of it),
2. does not understand the 18th-century concept of “race”. (Ibid)
Who or what is a stranger and how do they relate to me, the
European? That the stranger is inferior was not in doubt at this
time. The point of reference was the white race. Everything and
everyone else was measured by that standard. (This should be
evaluated according to its place, in its given age, in its given cultural
context, in its given conceptual network, etc., etc.) Even if there
was not complete agreement about each interpretation, there was
complete consensus on this. This was demonstrated by the endur¬
ing “popularity” of Theodor Bernhardt Welter’s book Lehrbuch
der Weltgeschichte für Gymnasien und höhere Bürgerschulen, which
was incredibly widely read by German-speaking people: it first
appeared in 1826 and by 1873 had been through 31(!) editions. We
find this book even in Nietzsche's library (see Campioni’s edition
of the library). Nietzsche owned the 14th edition (1854). Welter
distinguishes five races among “primitive peoples.” These are: Cau¬
casian, Mongolian, Negro, American (by which he means Native
American), and Malay. All of these, of course, are contrasted with
the spiritually rich and educated European. In Welter’s Lehrbuch, on
the subject of the religion of the “primitive peoples,” we find that,
“like the ancient Germans,” they worship gods without temples,
statues, and altars, and people pray to the celestial bodies, and
especially to fire. This one-sided picture is challenged by Miiller’s
45 Determination of the concept of a human race, 1785